Production Companies Canal+ España (uncredited), Cruise/Wagner Productions, Las Producciones del Escorpión S.L., Le Studio Canal+ (uncredited), Lucky Red (uncredited), Miramax Films (uncredited), Sociedad General de Cine (SOGECINE) S.A.
Studio Canal Plus, Dimension Films, Miramax, Producciones del Escorpion, Sogecine
This notion of childhood fears becoming real is one that has long fascinated rising director Alejandro Amenabar, who is already being considered a prodigy of the reality-bending thriller. He says of THE OTHERS: "I wanted to make a film full of long, dark corridors, a tribute to those beings, never unmasked, that stalked the hallways of my boyhood nightmares."
Fresh off the success of his acclaimed Spanish film, "Open Your Eyes" -- a sexy, fantastical suspense thriller which won critical accolades and will soon be seen adapted into Cameron Crowe's "Vanilla Sky," starring Tom Cruise -- Amenabar was ready to go even deeper into the mystery thriller genre. He began thinking about the very nature and origins of terror and suspense.
"My childhood was beset by fears — fear of the dark, fear of half-open doors, fear of closets, and generally speaking, fear of anything that could conceal someone or ' something,''' he recalls. "Thus, it is no surprise that I should become an avid devotee of the occult film."
"I often wonder," he continues, "why do we take so much pleasure in fear? And in part I believe it's because the experience is so intense, and yet we know that we are still safe on the other side of the screen. The more that safety is in question, the scarier the film.
Amenabar knew from the beginning that the unrelenting spell of THE OTHERS could only be created through a deep emphasis on mood and psychology, not superficial special effects. "I think it is dangerously easy in this type of film to go overboard with special effects and turn the desired shivers into revulsion," he notes. "For me, leaving something to the imagination is the essence of real horror. It's about the anxieties, the obsessions, the paranoia that lie latent in our consciousness. Wake these primal feelings up and you will transport the spectator back to the darkest corners of childhood fear. . back to that spine-tingling shiver that can only be described as terribly wonderful."
This is what Amenabar set out to do with THE OTHERS. He also wanted to provide an entirely fresh take on the root causes of haunted house with a surprise climactic twist that lingers a long time in the imagination. "So many horror stories are about sin — the idea that a haunted house or person must be purged of its curse and then the ghosts will disappear and good will triumph," he observes. "But with THE OTHERS I attempted to approach the subject from a different point of view. The characters are neither heroes nor villains, but ordinary human beings trying to understand a situation that defies everything in which they believe."
To bring THE OTHERS to life, Alejandro Amenabar knew that the key to it all would be the actress who plays Grace, a devout Christian and dedicated young mother stoically raising her children alone amidst the very palpable fear of wartime. Just when Grace thinks she has pulled her children through every known threat, a series of events unfold -- so strange and disturbing that she is forced to abandon all her beliefs and fears and enter the realm of the supernatural.
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